Clifford Nass, Eyal Ophir and Anthony Wagner set out to discover what talent is inherent in what they call “chronic media multitaskers.” Are they able to store and organize information better than others? Do they have superior memories?

In essence, they were testing a theory long held by social scientists that the brain can process just one thread of information at a time.

The researchers put 100 students — split between high multitaskers and low multitaskers — through three tests, each of which required concentration on one aspect of a situation, like focusing on red rectangles and ignoring blue ones.

What they found was that the high multitaskers couldn’t ignore things, regardless of how unimportant they knew them to be.

“They’re suckers for irrelevancy,” said Nass, a communications professor.

Indeed, said Ophir, the study’s lead author, “We kept looking for what they’re better at, and we didn’t find it.”

Wagner, a psychology professor, explained the results thusly as follows: “When they’re in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of memory, they’re not able to filter out what’s not relevant to their current goal. That failure to filter means they’re slowed down by that irrelevant information.”